DAKAR, Senegal — Some 45,000 people die each month in Congo as the world’s deadliest humanitarian crisis has failed to improve despite five years of relative peace there, according to a report released Tuesday.

The study had those findings despite the end of a 1998-2002 conflict that pulled in armies from half a dozen nearby countries, and the country’s first free and fair elections in more than four decades in 2006.

Congo’s monthly death rate of 2.2 deaths for each 1,000 people — essentially unchanged from the last survey in 2004 — is nearly 60 percent higher than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, according to the study by the International Rescue Committee and Australia’s Burnet Institute. The vast majority of deaths were from nonviolent causes, such as malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia or malnutrition.

The University of Colorado leadership is grappling with how to address a nationwide nosedive in the favorability of higher education — particularly, among conservatives — as CU’s own representatives and decision-makers disagree on what’s behind the downturn.